2015/06/28 LUNATIC FEST: 幕張メッセ; Chiba, JP

[threeleet]

triforce lights in our hotel room overlooking the stadium XD
Considering how far makuhari is, and how much of a pain it is to get back to the station & on a train after a giant festival, we were Girl was smart & started booking hotels pretty much immediately after the festival was announced at the Osaka show in March. XD So we ended up spending Saturday night at a hotel right next to the venue. Which was apparently a popular idea, as the lobby & all the restaurants inside were pretty much filled entirely with other festival-goers. Took us quite a while to get our food, but we were able to go up & climb into bed within a few minutes afterward, instead of being stuck on a 75+ minute train ride. Well, after the obligatory trip to the upstairs onsen. More importantly, we were able to sleep fairly late, check out, and walk to the venue in a few minutes (the route we took from the hotel back into the other side of the venue was MUCH quicker than the way we'd been led outside & had to walk all the way around the night before).
Day 2: LUNACY

Day 2 kicked off again w/ the same announcer guy introducing the event & asking everyone to be nice & follow the rules. LUNACY's intro music started just slightly late at 11:11 (scheduled 11:10), and another ridiculously short 3-song set ensued. Including SUSPICIOUS! Which has only been played one other time since 1992, at the 2010 Lunacy 黒服限定 show at Dome. And then- a repeat of SHADE. Umm, guys? Maybe if you're doing a rare thing, and only 3 songs a day, maybe do different songs each day? -_-; Like really, you could've thrown in BRANCH ROAD or NIGHTMARE or something... oh well. And especially considering how damn short FATE is, it was like only getting 1.5 songs! :P" Anyway.

1. FATE
2. SUSPICIOUS
3. SHADE

凛として時雨

Ugh. These guys. And girl. Saw them open for TSP in 2010 and I maintain my opinion of them as The Worst. Seriously. If the telephones vocals sound like a hyper Mickey Mouse yelling, this band sounds like Mickey & Minnie having a to-the-death screaming match. Yet somehow they're apparently very popular. Do not get. >_<;; Well, nobody can like everything, & nobody can be liked by everyone.

1. I was music
2. DISCO FLIGHT
3. Enigmatic Feeling
4. 感覚UFO
5. 傍観

ROTTENGRAFFTY

Yet another band that opened for J on one of his 5-Days, back in 2007. J joined them for a song.

1. 世界の終わり
2. This World (w/ J)
3. 響く都
4. DANCE
5. 金色グラフィティー

minus(-)

I didn't know anything about this band other than Ken Morioka was in it, who'd played in the all-star hide band at 気志團万博 in 2013, as well as another member of Soft Ballet, which all the old-school B-T fans seem to like (they've worked w/ B-T and side project SCHAFT). They were also joined by a female drummer. And holy hell, for an electronic duo at a pretty much all-rock festival, these guys got shit going. I ended up hitting Tower the next week to grab their (only) CD, but it was sold out, so I had to order it. Gonna get to see them w/ Atom on Sphere in October, too!

1. 444
2. No_4
3. PEEP SHOW
4. No_5
5. B612 (Ver.0)

AION

Aion is apparently an old (early 80s) metal band that LUNA SEA used to tour with. J stood off to the side & acted as roadie for their set. Their intro music was pipe organ. Everyone threw a frisbee at the end- all at once, too, which was mildly amusing.

1. RUINS ONLY
2. 君へ
3. SKY

KA.F.KA

Didn't know anything about this band, either, except that it contained 土屋昌巳, and a vocalist (Issay, of Der Zibet) who looks like a dead vampire version of Acchan. Oh, and Ken Morioka was in this one, too. They started off w/ an instrumental that Tsuchiya played at the first BT On Parade. For the last song, Sugizo came out & joined them for Joy Division's "Transmission"!

1. Spider & Pirates
2. Jack The Midnight
3. The Prisoner
4. Last Shadow
5. Transmission [Joy Division] (w/ SGZ)

MUCC

Mucc wins for "most times seen while going to other concerts". They played at hide summit, opened for TSP in 2010, played Summer Sonic the next year, and joined B-T on Parade in 2012, making this the 5th time we've seen them. And yet I still don't know any of their songs. Oh well. They did the "everyone sit down & then jump up at the same time!" thing again.

1. 睡蓮
2. ENDER ENDER
3. D・f・D (Dreamer from Darkness)
4. G.G.
5. 蘭鋳
6. TONIGHT

our spot under the moon :D [Alexandros]

Yet another J opener. They started 3m late. That is all I have in my notes. lol.

1. Stimulator
2. starrrrrrr
3. Kick & Spin
4. Famous Day
5. ワタリドリ

GLAY

OK, finally onto the bands I've actually heard of! Glay is another one of those huuuge bands that pretty much everyone knows a few songs from. Hell, I've even done a few of their songs at karaoke before, which they dutifully performed. They also threw in a LUNA SEA cover of... wait for it... SHADE. Um, what? Yeah, the song we already heard LUNACY play TWICE over the 2 days, now a third time. WTF? Didn't they check for overlap? >_<;

1. HEAVY GAUGE
2. 誘惑
3. 微熱(A) girl summer
4. 月に祈る
5. 口唇
6. SHADE [LUNA SEA]
7. 彼女のModern
8. TILL KINGDOM COME
9. HEROES

D'erlanger

Another old band I knew about, have some of their stuff, and have even seen live (and photo'd!) before! Part of the MC was 「何百人でもない。何千人でもない。何万人だよね！」 ("it's not 100s, not 1000s, it's 10s of 1000s of people here!"). INORAN came out & joined them for La Vie en Rose.

1. SADISTIC EMOTION
2. dummy blue
3. LULLABY
4. LA VIE EN ROSE (w/ INORAN)
5. CRAZY4YOU

BUCK-TICK

Awww yeah, time for my 2 favorite Japanese bands, back to back! Something I don't think has happened since the LSB shows in 1994 (which Ryuichi mentioned after having Ken Morioka & U-ta say a few words in the giant session- more on that later). The set started off w/ the BT Theme intro while fractals crawled across the screen. There were some audio issues in the first song, w/ the mic dropping out a bit in the middle of a line, which was annoying. J came out for ICONOCLASM (no surprise, since he covered it on the first B-T On Parade tribute album) & played/sang along, with Acchan adding "5 for LUNATIC babies!"

Theme of B-T
1. 独壇場Beauty
2. メランコリア
3. ONCE UPON A TIME
4. Django!!! -眩惑のジャンゴ-
5. Memento mori
6. ICONOCLASM (with J)
7. 真っ赤な夜
8. 形而上 流星
9. 無題

LUNA SEA

Despite B-T starting (and ending) on time (unlike a certain other band *cough*), LS was still 20m late... oh well. Guess 30m just isn't enough time to swap out all the stage equipment. Anyway.

After the first couple songs, Ryuichi started off saying "Even with 30,000 people, nobody..." then had to catch himself "No wait- GEORGE got injured. OK, nobody got any big injuries." LOL. Oh yeah- so apparently after Yoshiki knocked over his gong the night before, George stood it back up, but then it fell off its stand, and I'm guessing it landed on his foot, which was all wrapped up the 2nd night. LOL. Other highlights/notable moments: The 誰もいない部屋 bit at the end of TRUE BLUE was totally different. Got some nice fire columns during FACE TO FACE. Something about how they "have to keep making music." ROCKET DIVE cover! J turning the camera at the crowd during TIME IS DEAD. Ryuichi dancing for INO during the ROSIER solo...

And then it was time for the mega-session again! Dozens of other band members poured onto the stage, including Ken Morioka, 土屋昌巳, Mucc's vocalist, most of GLAY, a whole bunch of people from other bands, aaand- U-ta. Wait, what? NOBODY else from B-T came out? I AM DISAPPOINT. Here I was, looking forward for MONTHS to pretty much everyone from both bands being on the stage at the same time, and U-ta is the only one that comes out?? WTF, Acchan? I mean, I suppose BELIEVE isn't the kind of song that fits Imai's wailing guitar noises, and with both GLAY guitarists out, maybe Hoshino thought it'd be too crowded. Toll? OK, nothing to do, yeah, sure, but Acchan? Surely there were more than enough mics to go around. MRGH. Anyway. Still got an amusing highlight when Hisashi (GLAY) played the solo, and snuck in a tease of the main riff from 彼女のModern in the middle of it. XD After that was the usual waiting around for everyone to bow at everyone else as they all slowly shuffled off the stage, followed by the obligatory final WISH and the inevitable MOTHER piano solo. And then the very long & slow shuffle out of the venue afterward (even after waiting for most of the crowd to disperse).

1. Anthem of Light
2. TONIGHT
3. DESIRE
4. TRUE BLUE
5. FACE TO FACE
6. Providence
7. I for you
8. ROCKET DIVE [hide]
9. Metamorphosis
10. TIME IS DEAD
11. ROSIER
12. BELIEVE (mega-session)
13. WISH

goodbye, lunatic fest *sniffle*
Took our time in an attempt to avoid the crowds (which were still bad getting out of the main area), but not quite enough time to stop by the INO cutout for a pic, as everyone else headed out to go eat somewhere instead. As we got close to the station, I saw a small crowd gathered just outside around someone shredding like mad on guitar, and as I got closer I noticed it was a kid - like, 9-10 years old (who, of course, has his own YouTube channel). Damn you child prodigies, making me feel all unaccomplished & shit! Didn't get to watch for more than a few seconds before being dragged back along w/ the rest of the group, who then ended up not doing anything together anyway. *sigh* Figures. Oh well.

So yeah. A couple moments of disappoint on each night (well, one was sorta expected *coughXwank*), but overall still pretty damn sweet, & got to see a helluva lot of cool bands & people in one place. And hide covers. So, back to plain old boring regular concerts again after this, I guess. :P"

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